


The 7:00 to Poplar

by kaguyahime7



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Modern AU, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 14:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15865050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaguyahime7/pseuds/kaguyahime7
Summary: Shelagh falls in love. A modern Turnadette AU.





	The 7:00 to Poplar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ginchy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginchy/gifts).



> Thank you ginchy, for helping me turn this simple story idea into an epic masterpiece.

Shelagh first notices the handsome stranger on a soggy Thursday morning in January, when he gallantly shares his wide-brim umbrella with her until the seven o'clock bus arrives. 

A line of goosebumps run up her arm as it accidentally brushes up against his upturned one. The other commuters take shelter under newspapers or the inside tiny metal hutch plastered with graffiti and concert advertisements. She likes that he bravely faces towards the storm rather than hiding away from it. 

Her morning bus ride was steeped in routine. She rode the same bus every day and never once spoke to anyone. The sole exception to this rule was Fred, the driver, who called her Florence Nightingale after he saw her administering first aid to passenger one morning. But in general, Shelagh kept to herself and remained as noticeable as the faded wallpaper that lined the maternity ward of St. Raymond Nonnatus, the hospital where she worked as a midwife for the past ten years. 

Standing out in the rain left Shelagh and the handsome stranger to be the last boarders. Her normal seat, third row from the front on the right side of the bus, is already occupied by a snoozing businessman and his damp briefcase. The other commuters hastily drop purses, briefcases, and soaking raincoats on empty seats to avoid sitting with a stranger. But before she can resign herself to standing for the next thirty minutes, the handsome stranger waves and motions to the empty seat next to him. 

She sinks gratefully into the seat and brushes a damp blonde strand off her forehead. “You're a life saver, Mister—?”

“Turner. Doctor Turner,” he offers, holding his hand out and smiling warmly. 

His handshake is strong, with just the perfect balance of grip and looseness to be friendly, but not in a way that sets off warning bells. She starts to introduce herself, but his cellphone abruptly rings and he silently mouths an apology to her as he answers the call. His tone is professional, yet courteous, and Shelagh surmises the caller is a patient based on his calm reassurances that he will discuss the matter at a predetermined appointment. It's fortunate his attention is elsewhere, because the intimacy of their interaction leaves her feeling hyper-aware and slightly incoherent for the rest of the ride, not unlike times when she's had too much caffeine. 

Ever the efficient one, she uses this time together to analyzes his features and mannerisms down to the most minute details. A tall, lean build, with a mess of black hair featuring a healthy sprinkling of salt and pepper throughout, and lovely hazel eyes that shimmer like a polished stone in the sun. 

The rain subsides once they arrive at Poplar, but a fine mist covers the area and shrouds the surrounding buildings so they resemble hulking monoliths of glass and steel stretching towards the obscured sky. The bus disappears into the fog.

His closes his phone with a snap and winces when he catches her staring at the old-fashioned device. 

“I must seem terribly out of date with this dinosaur, but I cringe at the thought of becoming another anonymous zombie glued to their smart-phone.”

“There's nothing wrong with keep your technology needs simple,” she replies. What in the world inspired her to drop that useless platitude? She wasn't normally so empty-headed with people she just met. 

She stops him as he turns to go their separate ways. “Don't you need your umbrella back?”

He squints at the rain-soaked sky and rubs his arm thoughtfully, as if divining the forecast through muscle twinges and intuition rather than the current weather conditions. 

“Why don't you keep it until tomorrow? I think it's going to rain later. Besides, I'm sure we'll see each again. You take the seven bus everyday, right?”

He take her silent nod as an affirmation and turns again to walk away. He makes it only two steps before turning around, cocking his head, and readjusting the briefcase in his hand. 

“By the way, I don't even know your name.”

Her heart skips a beat. “It's Shelagh.”

“Patrick,” he grins back. “There, that's a start. I'll see you tomorrow morning, Shelagh.”

The rest of her day goes shockingly normal. She attends two births, assists with a well-baby checkup for a returning patient, and even has time to break away for lunch before two in the afternoon. The break room is quiet, and she finds herself lulled to peace by the steady hum of the refrigerator and the gentle trickling of rain against the window. It did start to rain again, just as Doctor Turner—Patrick, she mentally corrects—had predicted. She was glad to have the umbrella for her return commute this evening. Perhaps it would rain for the rest of the month and she could continue getting to know him better.

Now isn't that a silly thought, she thinks, finishing the remainder of her sandwich and walking towards the break room door. He was just being polite to someone in need and there was nothing more to it than simple chivalry. 

His umbrella, precariously poking out of Shelagh's work locker, catches her eye as she turns to switch off the light. 

Still, she can't wait to see him again.

*

Their transition from strangers to casual acquaintance occurs without much fanfare, as they start sitting together regularly starting with that first Thursday morning. It was remarkable, really, how easily her traditionally solitary commute shifted into a more lively one. This ritual easily becomes the highlight of her day and she boards the bus with a small bounce in her step. How peculiar was it that the pungent scent of stale sweat, old leather, and gasoline would conjure such happiness?

She couldn't remember the last time she felt anything beyond platonic affection for a man. She dated off an on, but there was never the instantaneous spark of attraction. It wasn't that she resigned herself to being single or abstained from relationships. She was content with her life as it was and the addition of another person seemed unnecessary. 

But there's something different about Patrick. He wasn't gorgeous in a glossy magazine way. Some male celebrities radiated raw sex appeal right off the flat pages of the tabloids she guiltily perused in the maternity ward waiting area. His thick hair has a distinctly floppy quality that made her want to smooth the errant strands out of his eyes. He was classically handsome, she decides, in a the manner of a 1950s clean-cut, every-man sort. The kind of man who would bring flowers and give genuine compliments to her parents. The kind who would look at her, and only her, and give her anything she asked for.

He was definitely older, she assumed, based on the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that remained long after he stopped smiling or laughing. He rotates through a small collection of sweaters and button-up shirts while the weather remains cold and dreary. The colors he chose reminded her of shifting ocean currents, ranging in tone from dark blue, to ominous gray, and the occasional green one. 

He has an easy-going charm that sets her at ease. His enthusiasm for the patients in his general practice and their well-being is as infectious as influenza in the winter. Once he learns of her profession, he eagerly showers her with questions about midwifery and the delicate balance between modern medicine and connecting on a deeper level with parents and their offspring. 

He isn't perfect by any means, of course. On Valentine's Day, of all days, he seems completely oblivious to the swath of red-clad people on the streets or advertisements for flowers and chocolate taped to the bus hutch that morning. 

“Is it just me, or is there a party occurring and we weren't invited?” He subtly gestures to another passenger dressed in a red sweater accented with glittering gold hearts. 

“You do know what today is?” she asks, trying not to let her disbelief slide into sarcasm.

“It's February...something,” he states. “I think it's the fourteenth? I definitely know it's Tuesday, which means I'll be doing inventory with Nurse Crane this morning. Come to think of it, she did make a crack yesterday about not mixing chocolate with our laxative supply.”

He smacks his forehead in sudden realization. “God, it's Valentine's Day, isn't it?” He shakes his head in disbelief. “I thought my son was pulling a rather bad con on me last night, insisting on buying two dozen biscuits for school today. I certainly owe him an apology after accusing him of thinking with his stomach instead of his brain.”

She removes the lid of the Tupperware container on her lap and rewards him with a densely frosted cupcake. “I know it's a bit early, and as a healthcare professional I generally frown on sweets first thing in the morning, but we're having a party at work and I need someone to taste these before I unleash my lack of baking skills onto my coworkers.”

He stuffs the entire cupcake in his mouth, leaving a small sprinkling of dark chocolate crumbs and red sprinkles on his creamy white sweater. “Ish so gud,” he gushes. 

She stifles a laugh while snapping the lid back on. “I don't usually bake, but I'll take that as a compliment. And you've got some frosting on your cheek.”

He checks his reflection in the dirty bus window and shrugs. “I'll save it as a treat for later,” he says nonchalantly. 

She watches him brush the cupcake remnants away, and her eyes alight on an oddly sized gap between two of the coin-shaped buttons. 

“You've lost a button,” she points out.

He glances down and frowns at the offending space. “That's the second time this year I'll need to ask Nurse Hereward for sewing assistance. Nurse Dyer will never let me hear the end of it.”

“I could sew it for you,” she suggests hastily. The words are out before she can take them back. It isn't like her to be so forward with someone, particularly one that she sees on such a limited basis, but there's something about him that draws out a bolder side to her personality.

“I wouldn't want to impose,” he demurs. “It's just a bit of light teasing from my staff, this lack of useful household skills. My ego will recover eventually.”

“I wouldn't want that,” she says. “Besides, I never repaid you for loaning me the umbrella. It's the least I could do.”

He laughs loudly. “That was over a month ago! And you just fed me, so I'd say we're even.”

She shakes her head and tries to ignore that pesky fluttering in her heart again. “It's no trouble at all. I'll have it back to you tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you, Shelagh,” he says warmly. “That would be very kind.”

The bus lurches to a stop, and in the chaos of departing passengers he fails to notice how her face grows red enough to match the sprinkles on her cupcakes.

**

Her friends catch on to the change in her demeanor by March. She can deny and deflect their questions all she wants, but they are as tireless as Sisyphus with his boulder and manage to wear her down one Friday night.

Trixie hip-bumps Shelagh at the kitchen sink, causing her wineglass to slosh tiny garnet drops onto Shelagh's rubber-gloved hands. They quickly disappear as Shelagh submerges another plate into a pool of soapy hot water. She glares at the melted cheese and bits of pizza crust still left on the dish, and scrubs at the food remnants with a vengeance.

“You should just talk to him! It's 2018 and you don't need permission to ask him out on a date. It's not as if you're a nun,” Trixie insists. She twists the faucet off, points at the sink and then directly at Shelagh. “And stop doing chores, those dishes can soak in the sink until morning. You're making me feel like Cinderella's evil stepsister, seeing you wash dishes on our girls' night in.”

Shelagh reluctantly leaves the kitchen area and exchanges places with Cynthia on the couch. Trixie sticks her tongue out at Cynthia, who winks at Shelagh and dons her discarded rubber gloves to continue the task Shelagh started. 

Trixie perches on the arm of the couch next to Shelagh and leans in, whispering, “Just ask him to get a drink sometime. You can always call one of us if things get dicey.”

“No bicycle rides though, not unless you're prepared to administer first aid on the first date,” Chummy says, piping up from her spot in an adjacent armchair.

Shelagh chews thoughtfully on her bottom lip and silently mulls over their advice. “You don't think it looks too forward to ask him out for coffee? Oh Lord, I don't even drink coffee.”

“Just get tea then!” Trixie and Chummy shout in unison.

Shelagh winces and sips her wine, chastened by their reaction. Trixie sets her wineglass down and squeezes next to her, laying a hand on Shelagh's shoulder as a silent apology.

“Shelagh, sometimes you sacrifice important things and experiences because you think there's something wrong with choosing something for yourself. You let other people take the scarf you've had your eye on the past month, or pick the nearly expired milk at the store so someone else can have a better selection. There's nothing selfish about choosing love. It isn't mutually exclusive to happiness. And you can still fall in love with someone and have plenty leftover for the rest of your friends and family. I know your heart is large enough.”

“I think you all are forgetting the most important of the equation,” Jenny quips, whirling around and pointing the television remote at each of them. The other girls look at her quizzically as she tosses the remote to Shelagh.

“You don't even know if your Netflix queues are compatible!”

Their laughter bounces off the walls and buffers Shelagh's slowly growing courage. They're absolutely right, there is nothing wrong with asking a friend to grab beverages at a coffeehouse. What's the worst that could happen?

In hindsight, her increasing boldness could be attributed to the crisp short-sleeve shirts he's been wearing since the hot weather began. She's come to appreciate his rather nice forearms that are accentuated by a fine layer of black hair and sinewy musculature.

On a Monday morning in April, she dons her nurse's scrubs with extra care and pulls her hair back into a tight, practical ponytail. She pauses in front of her bedroom mirror and stares pensively at her reflection. No makeup, save for a dash of Chapstick across her lips. No jewelry, except for a small silver cross bequeathed from her deceased mother. Her only acknowledgment of modern fashion is a set of retro 1960s glasses. The pleasantly up-swept frame is miles more attractive than the plain, rather owlish frames she had until last year. 

In a spurt of inspiration, she pulls her hair free and lets it gently unravel near the nape of her neck. She gapes at the lengthy mass of honey-blonde hair as it swishes free from the hair tie and falls in perfect waves below her shoulders. It's like she's seeing herself for the first time in ages. Her mother and father always said she was beautiful, but she discarded their compliments as parental platitudes. Her friends loudly extolled her good looks and quietly wondered why she was so self-conscious about her appearance. She was always “Shelagh, the reliable one” or “Shelagh, the smart one”. What if she wanted to be something more?

Her phone alarm chirps from within her messenger bag. It's now or never and she scurries out of her flat towards the bus stop before she loses her nerve.

The sky is dyed in shades of red by a haze of pollution and other particulate matter, and the sun burns ominously just above the horizon.

“Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.”

Shelagh shakes her head at the old-fashioned superstition, one that she likely absorbed from Sister Monica Joan on one of her visits to her former workplace. Sailor take warning, indeed. The only thing she needed to fear from a smoggy red sky was an uptick in patients with respiratory problems.

Fate repays her hubris in the form of a new commuter that morning. Shelagh can hear her before she arrives at the bus stop. A dark-haired, sinfully fashionable woman stands next to Patrick and playfully bemoans his taste in coffee. Her throaty laugh echoes all the way down the street to where Shelagh stands, frozen in place despite the humid morning. The woman's thick lashes blink out a Morse code message of easy sensuality and confidence as she teases Patrick about the dreadful brew in his traveler mug. They banter back and forth about the merits of light versus dark coffee roasts while boarding side by side. 

Thank God she keeps a spare set of headphones in her bag. At least she can pop on an audio book or something to drown out the white noise of their conversation. She glances up once and catches him staring at her from another seat mouthing something incomprehensible. 

Trixie would have been brave and scowled back at him. Chummy might've made a joke and laughed off the snub. 

But she was not feeling brave or witty at the moment, and chooses the safe but petty route instead. 

She ignores him.

The rest of the morning is a blur until her supervisor tactfully pulls Shelagh into the break room. While Sister Julienne busies herself with putting water in the kettle and waiting for it to boil, Shelagh slouches into a hard plastic chair and picks at a paper napkin. She thinks it was just as well that her hopes and expectations had only been penciled in her heart. They could be brushed aside and easily discarded like eraser shavings.

“Now then,” Sister Julienne states, setting down two steaming mugs of tea and a box of pink wafers. “Why don't you tell me what's been bothering you?”

Shelagh takes a small sip and wonders why the flavor tastes particularly bitter today. Jealously stings like a paper cut as she swallows and lets the hot herbal liquid numb her mouth and throat.

“What makes you think something's bothering me?”

“Well, for one thing, I sincerely doubt that napkin did anything to deserve such a thorough dismemberment,” she replies dryly.

Shelagh's stomach sinks as she guilty glances down at the small mountain of shredded paper next to her mug. Were her troubles that transparent?

Sister Julienne rests a hand on one of Shelagh's hunched shoulders. “My dear Shelagh, when you work side by side with someone for ten years, you tend to pick up on disturbances in their cosmic balance, to quote Sister Monica Joan. Besides, one does not need psychic insight to see that something is troubling you.”

“I'm such a fool,” Shelagh mumbles. “I want to be able to say, 'This is where it hurts', because if I could list my symptoms, you could offer me a cure. But you can't, because I can't. This is the kind of trivial problem I thought only existed in films.”

“Did something upsetting happen recently?”

“It was nothing,” she mutters. “I let my pettiness get the better of me and I feel absolutely awful.”

Sister Julienne frowns as she breaks a wafer in half and hands the other part to Shelagh. “I have never known you to not remedy a mistake, especially when it is absolutely in your power to do so. You do not start something and not see it through, merely because you face a challenge.”

Shelagh mulls silently over her words. 

“As for your dire situation, tell me, are you in love with an otherworldly creature that won't return your affections?”

Shelagh chokes and spits her tea out. Sister Julienne primly mops the spilled liquid as Shelagh gulps down water and attempts to compose herself.

“Where on earth did you come up with that idea?” she exclaims. “Don't tell me you read--”

“I am a nun, Shelagh, but that does not preclude immunity to certain aspects of popular culture.” She winks and refills Shelagh's mug. “But if you must know, my knowledge comes third-hand from Sister Winifred and her rather...diverse literary pursuits.”

Shelagh grimaces and slowly sips her tea again. “No, it's nothing like that.”

“I only tease because I know you so well, my dear. If you will pardon my frankness, I believe your problems may be attributed to matters of the heart?”

Sister Julienne nods knowingly as Shelagh sighs into her mug. “Is it that obvious?” she asks wanly.

“Like a budding flower in springtime. You seem happier and more vibrant than I have seen in a long time. I would be overjoyed if you have someone special in your life.” She coughs discreetly and clears her throat with another sip of tea. “But I would not wish to pry into a matter that is none of my business.”

“No,” Shelagh insists, her mouth full of flaky vanilla goodness. “Of course I would tell you if something like that were to happen. ”

“Is it someone here at the hospital? Perhaps I already know the lucky man who managed to catch the eye of my best midwife.”

Shelagh blushes furiously. “He commutes on the same morning bus as me. I know he works somewhere here in Poplar as a general practitioner. His name is Patrick.”

“And there it is, the joy in your voice as you say his name. You speak of him as one would describe sunshine on a gray day.”

Sister Julienne smirks into her tea as Shelagh’s blush floods down through her neck and collarbone. She loves the woman as a surrogate daughter and therefore must tease her accordingly. 

“You do so remind me of myself when I was your age. But surely Nurse Franklin or one of the other young ladies would be a better confidante for such matters?”

Swallowing the last bit of her wafer, Shelagh shakes her her head and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. “Have you ever been in love, Sister?”she asks shyly. 

Her eyes bulge immediately as the depth of the question sinks in. “I'm so sorry! That was extremely presumptive of me, please forget I said anything.”

Sister Julienne's eyes twinkle at her reaction. “Is it so hard to believe that a woman of the cloth may have once desired other things at some point in her youth?”

“Er—no, of course not,” Shelagh stammers.

She smiles at Shelagh's halting words, recalling the fresh-faced graduate from ten years ago who could rattle off midwifery knowledge like an encyclopedia, but was unsure of how she would fare outside of her books and studies. 

“May I give you some old-fashioned advice? Talk to him again. Do not burn your bridges over one small infraction. Otherwise, how else will you know if this is a passing infatuation or the meeting of a lifetime?” Sister Julienne shakes her head and covers Shelagh's restless hands. The gesture feels supportive, but not overprotective. It is the very act she would want her mother to do, if she were still alive to listen to her daughter's troubles. 

“Shelagh, you bring happiness into people's lives on a daily basis. Perhaps it is time to allow yourself some as well.”

The skies are clear the following morning, as is her conscience. A butter-yellow sun warms the cobblestone and concrete streets, and she can nearly see windowsill plants in neighboring homes swiveling in earnest to soak up the rays. 

Patrick bounds onto the bus with the grace and overt ebullience of a leggy Labrador retriever, and narrowly avoids sloshing his coffee-filled traveler cup onto her arm as he whips out a book from his briefcase. 

“There you are! I've been waiting ages to show you this book. The online tracking information said it was delivered to my flat a few days ago, but the mailman left it in my neighbor's box by accident, and she just gave it to me yesterday, after giving me a stern lecture about my poor taste in caffeinated beverages.”

His words are sudden and rushed, like water bursting from a broken dam. Confusion is still clearly evident on her face, so he continues, “Magda has very high standards about the brew, apparently. Her husband has an import business that deals in, all of things, coffee beans.”

The beautiful woman from yesterday. The one who was teasing him about his coffee. The wrinkle of yesterday's disastrous morning fades away like a bad dream. 

“That was your neighbor?” she asks.

“Oh yes. She needed some help with navigating the bus routes around here. And she was very curious about my preference for blonde roasts, since the darker beans are significantly more popular for their less acidic flavor.” He waves away the topic and shakes the book at her. “Now, on to more important things, look at this!”

“The Great Ulcer War?” She chuckles at his choice of reading material. “I thought I was the only person who read printed books nowadays,” she remarks.

“It's the scent of the paper. You can't duplicate that with an e-book,” he blurts out. “This book is absolutely fascinating. It's about the history of ulcer disease and the shift from hyper secretion of acid as the culprit to a new bacterial theory. There's medical history, corporate machinations, and plenty of diabolical intrigue. A real gut-clencher, you could say.”

She's extremely fond of Patrick, to put it lightly, but even that makes her nose wrinkle in distaste.

“I'm sorry, that was absolutely atrocious. My son is always berating my 'Dad jokes' and says no one under forty would think I'm funny.” He withdraws into the seat and starts to put the book away, chastened by her reaction. 

“Well, it doesn't trigger my gag reflex, so you have at least one person who thinks you're funny.”

His eyes widen and for a moment, she thinks he's going to hug her. She doesn't know how she would react to that. It was one thing to share an umbrella in the rain, or to regularly sit with each other for a morning commute and converse about books and their work, but physical contact? The very thought both terrifies and thrills her in a way she's never felt around any man before. 

***

She's seen enough Disney movies and watched plenty of television shows to have an inkling of how love at first sight appears. But what they failed to convey, at least until now, is the swooping sensation of her heart as its swept up by this man and his presence. It's hearing this man, who she barely knows, rhapsodizing about ulcerative colitis and making terrible jokes, but not feeling an urge to run away. It's sharing his unbridled enthusiasm and being caught up in his passion. It's wanting to know more about him beyond their thirty minute commute together. He is like a gift that she joyously unwraps and revels in each newly discovered layer. 

She wants to know more about him. How does he take tea? Does he wear socks with his sandals? Is he the type that licks the side of a dripping ice cream cone or lets the sticky goodness slide carelessly down his hand? What are his hopes and dreams, his aspirations and regrets? In the back of her mind, a small part wonders if he might feel the same about her. 

They never seem to run out of things to talk about. He's the first man who does not flinch away from the gory details about her work. They swap tales about triumphing in the face of an emergency and weathering the never ending flood of patients. But it is not all light-hearted banter or funny anecdotes about their coworkers. Neither of them is a stranger to tragedy, for one. She learns about his wife's painfully long battle with ovarian cancer, which left him to cope with a son who seemed to age decades while grieving. She can empathize, certainly, and weaves in bits about her mother's death when she was just as young as his son. They bond over perseverance in the wake of tragedy, strength in spite of loss, hope in the face of trauma. 

Having a secret crush was a deliciously wonderful experience that carried her from summer into fall. She delighted in leaving behind the muggy, humid mornings of July and August. She could practically taste the crisp, cool air as she stepped outside of her flat now. 

A grin spreads honey-slow across her face as she spots Patrick in the distance. She'll never tell him, of course, but he's wearing one of her favorite sweaters and that seems to be a lucky sign for the day ahead. Charcoal gray and medium length, with a narrow v-neck that reveals a sliver of his white Oxford shirt beneath. 

They've grown so close that he seems to have an uncanny ability to know when she's walking to the bus stop. He beams back at her down the street and raises his arm to wave her over. A copy of the most recent Lancet issue is tightly wedged under his other arm. 

“Watch your arm, fool!”

Shelagh winces as his outstretched arm accidentally collides with two women, completely identical in physical appearance with matching scowls and angry lines across their foreheads. 

“You could've hurt my sister. Inconsiderate toff,” one of them mutters.

“I'm terribly sorry, are you alright?” he apologized. 

The other nods, her dark expression an exact mirror of her sister's. 

“It was an accident,” Shelagh cuts in, rushing to Patrick's side. “There's no need to be nasty about it.”

“You hear that Mave? Miss Nosy Nose thinks it's her business to butt in to any conversation on the street.”

Patrick glares at the women and brushes Shelagh back behind him. “Now wait a minute, you can't just go around harassing people--”

“Oh!”

Mave falls to her knees and groans, a low, keening noise that makes Shelagh spring into action instinctively. Her shawl flutters to the ground and a heavily pregnant belly bulges below her quivering hands. The other passengers gawk and mutter at the spectacle rapidly unfolding before them. 

“Are you having contractions? How far apart are they?”Shelagh asks, peppering the questions at the woman like bullets. 

“Meg, it's not time,” Mave wails. “Get them away from me.”

The other passengers crowd anxiously in a circle around Mave. She curls into a ball on the sidewalk, whimpering and clutching her stomach with both hands. The seven o'clock bus rolls to a stop several feet away and Fred stumbles down the steps, clutching a police baton and a can of pepper spray in either hand.

“What's going on?” he demands. 

“Call an ambulance!” Shelagh shouts.

Fred chucks the pepper spray on the driver's seat and whips out his cell phone, talking hurriedly under his breath to the dispatcher as the other passengers draw in closer to stare at Mave's shaking form.

“Everyone back up! Give the woman some air, for God's sake!”

Patrick's voice cuts through them like a clarion bell and the onlookers sheepishly board the bus. He turns to Shelagh, who swiftly kneels beside Mave and positions her scarf to cushion her woman's neck. 

“I'm a midwife, you don't need to be afraid,” Shelagh says calmly. “I'd like to check baby's position and heart rate, if that's alright with you.”

“Get away from my sister!” Meg roars. The subsequent slap to Shelagh's face echoes like a thunderclap around the street and sends her spinning to the ground. 

“Don't you dare touch her,” Patrick snarls, grabbing Meg and shoving her back into a nearby wall.  
“Your sister may be in labor, and we might be her only help until an ambulance arrives. Now, unless you prefer her to give birth in the street, let us help her.”

“Please, make it stop,” Mave whispers.

“You're in goods hands with Doctor Turner and myself,” Shelagh reassures her. “We've called an ambulance and they should be here any moment. I know this is rough, but I can see you're a strong woman, Mave. Be brave, tell me how far apart the contractions are, okay?”

Mave grits her teeth and another wave of pain rockets through her. “They're getting worse, Meg! I can't bear the pain, it hurts so much!”

Sirens echo off in the distance. A flood of amniotic fluid soaks through Mave's dress and coats the bottom half of Shelagh's scrub top. Sirens echo off in the distance and Shelagh silently says a prayer to hasten the paramedics' arrival. 

Fred ducks his head out the window and yells, “The ambulance will be here in a minute. You going to be okay, Doctor Turner?”

“Go ahead, we'll stay until they get here,” Patrick shouts back. 

Fred salutes him wordlessly and steers the bus away from the curb, leaving the four people behind in a cloud of diesel fuel and dust. Patrick snaps his briefcase open and withdraws a stethoscope and two sets of latex gloves. He smoothly drapes the stethoscope around Shelagh's neck and crouches down on Mave's other side. 

“Check the fetal heartbeat. I've got an oxygen mask and bag if there's an emergency. We need to make sure the baby isn't in distress.”

Shelagh nods and presses the diaphragm against Meg's distended belly. Her tongue darts between her teeth as she glances between her watch and Mave's heaving belly. 

“Baby's heartbeat is strong, one hundred and twenty per minute.” She pauses, shifting the diaphragm to the side. She inspects Mave, sobbing through another contraction, and pulls Patrick's ear close enough to her mouth that her breath tickles his auricle. 

“There's another heartbeat,” she whispers. “Twins.”

The ambulance screeches to a stop beside them. The paramedics quickly survey the unusual scene, briskly moving Mave onto a stretcher and covering her with a silver Mylar blanket.

“Wait, can I go with her?” Meg cries. “Please, I'm sorry for hitting your friend. I didn't know what you were doing to her is all.”

“Of course you can accompany her,” Shelagh says quickly. One of the paramedics starts to object, but clamps his mouth shut after Patrick fixes him with a steely glare. 

Meg's thank-you is cut off when a paramedic slams the rear doors shut. The ambulance darts away, sirens blaring and lights flashing, and disappears down the road. 

Patrick leans heavily against a nearby building exterior and lets out a ragged sigh, snapping off his gloves and watching the receding ambulance in the distance. 

“Crisis over.”

Shelagh removes her gloves and stands next to him. Strands from her previously tight ponytail curl around her flushed face. Patrick tilts his head towards her and grimaces. 

“We're like an officer and a sergeant the morning after the Somme. And that is not to say I see myself as the officer.” He rubs his face and groans loudly. “God, I could really go for a cigarette right now.”

“You're a smoker?” she asks. It wasn't terribly uncommon for physicians and other healthcare workers to smoke, but she never detected a hint of nicotine in all the days she's known him. 

“I was. I gave it up when my son was born. But after a morning like we just had, I think we both deserve one.”

“What was your brand?”

“Henleys.”

“Oh, Henleys. I loved Henleys. They were the kind my father used to smoke. I used to sneak them out of his desk when I was about fourteen.”

He pretends to look at shocked at her candid confession. But for the briefest moment, a pained, almost regretful look cross his face almost immediately after she brought up her father and his taste in cigarettes. Or she could be imagining things, being utterly spent after their tense medical emergency. 

His normally cheerful expression returns as he glances at his watch and squints in the general direction where their morning bus usually arrives from. 

“Well, the next bus should be here in about twenty minutes. After the morning we've had, I almost feel like playing hooky and splurging on doughnuts instead of going to work.”

She giggles and elbows him. “I don't have any doughnuts, but I'll share my protein bar if you're good.”

“Deal.”

There's a warm fluttering feeling in her heart. It's just friendly affection, she decides. Nothing more than that. 

****

She guzzles water and aspirin before staggering out on a starkly bright Friday morning in October. Two of her colleagues, Patsy and Delia, announced their engagement the night before and she had spent the majority of the evening downing whiskey shots and stale pretzels at their impromptu engagement party. She’s only slightly hungover, but the thought of leaving Sister Julienne short-handed temporarily silences the jackhammer knocking around in her head. 

Misjudging the distance between the last stair of her building and the sidewalk was only the first of many problems that day. She stumbles and falls like an unsteady runner in a three-legged race. She manages to break her fall with her left hand, and the sharp sensation of her skin scraping and rubbing roughly against the concrete is a sufficient distraction from her hangover. She doesn’t have time for anything more than rudimentary first aid lest she miss the bus. 

Fred takes one look at her messy bun, the bruise-like circles under her eyes, and her inside-out scrub top, and waves away her attempts to scan her bus pass and pay her fare. 

Patrick's eyes roam up and down as she collapses into her regular seat next to him, taking in her disheveled appearance with the practiced eye of someone who had been there once himself.

“Late night?” he quips.

“Two of my work friends got engaged last night,” she says wearily. “I'm afraid most of my colleagues will be calling in sick today, but I couldn't leave my supervisor in a staffing bind, so here I am.”

“Loyal but stubborn,” he grins. She acknowledges his observation with a wry smile and rummages in her bag for a band-aid and antibacterial ointment. 

“It's one of the things I love about you.”

It's colder now, and the off-kilter symphony of the bus engine, outside traffic and heater buzz in a discordant harmony that makes it hard to hear him. Perhaps she fell harder than she originally thought and hit her head. Do concussions cause auditory hallucinations? She can't remember.  
His eyes widen and a muscle next to his mouth twitches twice as soon as the words are out of his mouth. 

The bus sharply rounds a corner and unexpectedly sends her sliding into him. Flyaway hairs from her bun tickle his chin and even with the background noise, she can hear him sigh, ever so softly. 

“You've hurt your hand.”

She heard that loud and clear, strangely enough. “Oh, well, I'm sure there's no need to amputate,” she says lightly. 

“Would you like me to take a look at that?”

She only hesitates for a moment before replying with a breathy, “Yes.”

He takes her injured hand in his without any preamble and examines the wound almost...lovingly? Every synapse in her body threatens to burst as tenderly examines the raw, red skin. In the length of a heartbeat the world around them ceases to exist, there is nothing except the two of them and the instinctual feeling that there is more to this action than what appears to be basic helpfulness. Her fingers tremble and she forgets to breathe, too afraid to make any sound or movement that might bring this dream crashing down. He brings her hand closer to his face and she's dizzy with the thought that he might kiss her wound. A moment—or an eternity—passes as the unspoken question of consent simmers between them.

The magic abruptly dissolves when the bus lurches to the curb and Fred shouts their arrival at Poplar. It's her stop. She has to get off the bus, go to work, and pretend like the last minute never happened. She hurriedly makes her way to the door but pauses to glance back at him. He's trying to say something, she realizes, as his mouth moves but the words are drowned out by noise from other passengers and the bustle from outside the bus. She momentarily forgets that Poplar is his stop too.  
His face is a blur as she stumbles out into the street and sprints several blocks to the hospital. 

Did he want her to stay? Even if she did, what more was there to say?

She dashes through the automatic doors and up the stairs until she reaches the locker room. Her forehead thuds against a locker. Numbness gradually spreads through her body the longer she stands against the cool metal and she is grateful for the loss of all sensation. 

Except for the hand he nearly kissed, smoldering and humming with a kind of desire that utterly terrifies her. 

*****

Feeling true romantic love for the first time was a bittersweet experience. The very idea of falling completely in love is alarming, and the comfort and safety of her solitary life dwarf the flickering desire to try something new.

She finds love to be a messy emotion. It was not easily compartmentalized like anger or sadness. There were nuances, facets, and other other complications that cannot be shelved for rainy day contemplation. Love cannot be organized, labeled, and stored in sterile containers like the tools of her trade. A relationship does not fit into her routine of the past ten years, and the thought of wedging one in is as baffling as putting salt in her morning tea. Love is overwhelming like an ocean wave that threatens to drown the steady sand castle of a life that she's made for herself. 

She tries to forget him, but memories of his face, his scent, the electric current between their briefly clasped hands sticks to her subconscious like melted taffy. There is something, an intangible force that drew two complete strangers together and made an otherwise monotonous part of their lives something special. She runs from her feelings, but cannot hide from this force of nature forever. 

Her friends are sympathetic but not pushy for details. They just so happen to make excessive lunch portions on a recurring basis and insist she eat the extra food. She spends her nights in the hospital chapel with Sister Julienne and the other nuns, and does not pull away when Sister Julienne grasps her hand from the beginning to end of evensong. On the weekends, she numbs herself with chocolate milkshakes and Meg Ryan movie marathons in bed. 

The trees begin to lose their leaves and so too does she put aside any hope of seeing him again. The crisp autumn mornings gradually grow colder and nip at her skin. She spends the remaining days of autumn buried under layers of knitted scarves and old insecurities. 

By the time December rolls around, the midwifery schedule is a mess of vacation requests and sick leave deductions. Half of her coworkers are on holiday in warmer parts of the world, and the other half are bedridden with influenza. Shelagh gladly pencils her name in to cover shortages and submerges herself in a dizzying amount of overtime work. She opts for an earlier bus and no longer takes the seven o'clock into work. Once or twice she spots him waiting for their bus. Even in a crowd of commuters he manages to look lost. She avoids sitting in windowed seats after that.

And then, just as another small gesture on a rainy day took her down a crooked path of confused feelings and doubt, something unexpected happens to steer her back to the road she recently abandoned.

The bus is practically empty these days. Apparently her coworkers are not the only ones with plans that don't involve slogging through frosty morning commutes. She does not talk to anyone on her commute anymore, preferring the solitary company of audio books and podcasts to keep her mind distracted. 

She's so engrossed in her entertainment, in fact, that she nearly bowls over a small boy at the entrance of St. Raymond's. An apology falls from her lips as his jelly-filled doughnut splatters to the ground.

“Excuse me, are you Shelagh?”

His voice is short and high-pitched, and the eager way he hops up to her reminds Shelagh of the little yellow finches that hover around the hospital's quadrangle in the springtime. Always chirping merrily in the hopes of finding scattered breadcrumbs and filling the courtyard with light birdsong.

“You're much prettier in person,” he states, grinning at her. “Your eyes look like those forget-me-not flowers that grow in our garden.”

She's completely gobsmacked at this boy. He withdraws another doughnut from a white paper bag dappled with baking grease and offers it to her. 

“My dad says you shouldn't take sweets from strangers, but you're not a stranger. Not really, after everything I've heard about you.”

Shelagh takes the offered doughnut and finally manages to find her own voice after being shocked into silence. “I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage. Have we met?”

“Oh, introductions.” He hastily wipes powdered sugar onto his pants and holds out a semi-clean hand. “My name is Timothy. I think you know my Dad.”

Thankfully the hospital entrance is deserted this early, otherwise she would have an entire audience of patients and other hospital employees witness her dismayed reaction. 

“How did you find me?” she asks weakly. 

“I know all about you,” he replies seriously. “Well, at least what I can gather from what my Dad tells the other nurses at work. He thinks I'm not listening, that was his mistake.”

His mouth thins into a slim pink line. “Dad doesn't talk about you lately, though. I think it makes him sad, like when Mummy died. He just sits in the kitchen and stares at nothing. Granny Parker said he's like a sheepdog without his sheep.”

Shelagh sags against a wall, weighing the revelation and its possible implications. Initially, guilt at causing Patrick any sort of pain forms a thick knot in her stomach. She never would have guessed that her sudden absence would have that strong of an impact on him. Was it possible that he was hurting just as much as she was? Or that he was confused about how they were caught up in something that neither could truly walk away from?

A buzzing sound from within Timothy's coat pocket interrupts her angst-ridden thoughts. He frowns, glancing at the screen and then at the faded clock hung above Shelagh's head.

“I have to leave for school. There's an extra transfer I need to catch or I'll be late, and then Dad will find out what I did.”

She rifles through her bag for her wallet. “Do you need extra bus fare? I feel like it's the least I could after you came all this way to talk to me.”

He grins and shakes his head. “When I told some of Dad's nurses what I wanted to do, they all pitched in and gave me more than enough money to get here and then on to school. They think you're really great, especially because now they don't have to pretend that Dad's jokes are actually funny.”

“This is for you,” he says, reaching into his other coat pocket and withdrawing a carefully folded piece of notebook paper. “It's from me and someone else.”

He rushes down the street, his breath forming little puffs in the frigid morning air. He waves once and dashes away, satisfied with the success of his early morning mission.

Shelagh, still slightly dazed from her encounter, opens the paper quickly. The contrast of the black ballpoint pen ink and the stark white paper makes the single written question swim before her eyes.. 

Please will you come see my Dad?

*******

The words, and the underlying meaning behind them, rattle around her brain for the rest of her shift. She runs through what feels like the entire emotional spectrum before lunch. The subsequent emotional hangover is just as exhausting as an alcohol-induced one and she downs copious amounts of black tea to bring her energy level somewhat back to normal. 

Should she go to him? More importantly, does he even want to see her again? 

She prays fervently that evening. She wants to ask for courage, strength, anything to prop up her faltering feelings. God sees everything, she knows, even if you bury something deep in the recesses of your heart. This lesson had been reinforced from years of attending church with her mother and working with nuns for the past ten years. She cannot wish for one thing when she really wants another. 

So she prays for acceptance instead. Acceptance for his feelings, whatever they may be, whether they are platonic or not. Acceptance for the possibility that he will not want to see her, because she ran away from him and his words. 

Acceptance that he might still love her, even after all this time apart. 

An address, in addition to the tension-laden question, was written on the other side of Timothy's message along with a comment to be at that location by six that evening. Later that night, while sitting in the back of a cab, she chuckles at his brimming overconfidence that he could convince her in less than fifteen minutes to meet his father after nearly two months of painfully awkward avoidance.

She creeps in through the front door of the local community center and pauses at the doorway of the brightly lit auditorium. A pack of Cubs streak around the room with wooden swords and spears. She spots Timothy among them, clad in a poorly fitting medieval dress and conical hat, with a plastic crossbow dangling precariously from his belt.

“Oy, Tim, did you bring a lady friend to help with your dress?”

The boys cackle and catcall Timothy, who shoots a rubber tipped arrow at them and dashes towards Shelagh. He runs towards her at full speed, clutching the sides of his dress and grinning from ear to ear.

“You came!”

“That's a lovely...um...dress you're wearing,” she remarks.

He attempts a wobbly curtsy much to her amusement. His conical headdress slips forward and narrowly misses poking Shelagh in the eye. “We're doing Robin Hood for the Christmas pageant. We drew straws for the roles and I ended up with Maid Marian. But I'm the only one who gets to use the bow and arrow set, so I'm okay with the part.”

“Tim! We're starting rehearsal!”

He waves at the other boys inside and grins at Shelagh. “My dad's in the kitchen. It's at the end of the hall.” He dashes inside and leaves Shelagh alone in the darkness.

The boys' shouts recede as she pads down the long, shadowy hallway. Her heartbeat speeds up rapidly as she searches for the right words to convey her decidedly messy feelings. But the thought of seeing him again and even a chance at reconciliation soothes an ache that she couldn't name until now. 

The kitchen curtain shimmers under her fingers as she parts the beaded strands and enters the dimly lit room.

“Hello, Patrick.”

His plate of fish and chips clatters noisily to the floor. The tangy aroma of vinegar, fried food, and oily newspaper fills her nostrils. A wave of affection at the sight of him eating such a sad, lonely meal washes over her. His complexion, skim-milk blue under the fluorescent lighting, accentuates each wrinkle and worry line mapped out on his face. 

“Shelagh.”

A shudder ripples through her. The way he says her name makes her knees wobble unsteadily, and the tenderness in his voice unnerves whatever resolve she scraped together between the auditorium and here.

He rubs his eyes and blinks owlishly at her. “How...how did you find me?”

She hands him Timothy's note. Her repeated handling of the note, nearly twelve hours' worth of nervous folding and re-folding as she wavered over coming tonight, have made the paper nearly translucent. 

“This was from you and someone else, apparently.” 

She had prepared a lengthy speech to explain herself. But now, with the two of them standing together for the first time in weeks, it seems unnecessary. She emerges from the fog that shrouded her heart and take that utterly terrifying—but necessary—first step forward. There is no need for flowery language about unrequited feelings. If she's learned anything from their time together, less was somehow more with him.

“I still know you so little, but I couldn't be more certain.” 

He cautiously takes her left hand in his and absently rubs his thumb against the small, shiny scar on the back of her hand. The wound has long since healed, but each swipe refreshes the memory of that particular morning in October, when she was too afraid to admit she had fallen in love with this quirky, kind, and devastatingly endearing man. 

“I am completely certain,” he says softly. 

A sigh escapes her mouth. The dizzying sensation she expected from the last time she was so close to him is nowhere to be found. His lips meet hers and chase away any lingering thoughts of fear and rejection. He tastes like the warm and safe place she's been searching for all this time. He tastes like home. 

He breaks away and presses a single kiss to her forehead. She folds into him, noting that her head fits perfectly into his collarbone like the final piece in a puzzle. 

“There, we've made a start.”

*******

Shelagh had first noticed the handsome stranger on a soggy Thursday morning, when they shared a wide-brim umbrella and changed each other's lives forever. 

But unlike that extraordinary day in January, she does not hesitate to curl up against the same handsome stranger while taking shelter from the rain. There is no overthinking to her actions, no doubts about her intentions and the possibly messy fallout from being so close to such a man. 

“You really need to work on your time management skills,” Shelagh scolds lightly. “I thought we were going to be late for sure waiting for your coffee to finish brewing.”

“I need to work on my time management skills?”Patrick replies incredulously, shifting the umbrella to fully cover her from the rain. “This is coming from the person who just had to do some laundry at the last minute before leaving for work?” A river of rainwater gushes off the umbrella and splashes their boots. “And why in the world did you insist on putting it off until Tim left for school? He's not allergic to laundry, despite his reticence to putting clothes away in drawers.”

“The garment had to be hand-washed,” she says primly. A bead of rainwater—or sweat, possibly—rolls down the side of face as she absently fiddles with a slim silver ring on her left hand. 

“What do you own that has to be washed by—oh.” Patrick chuckles and casually pulls her in for a quick kiss. “Do you have something special planned for tonight, Mrs. Turner?” he teases.

She rolls her eyes and steps forward to board the bus, greeting Fred and weaving through the crowd to their regular seats. Patrick settles next to her and takes a long, satisfying slurp of coffee. His hand finds one of hers as the bus speeds off towards Poplar. Shelagh rests her head against him and feels the steady rise and fall of his chest in tandem with her own. 

“Love you,” he says, leaning down to lightly kiss her. 

“Love you too,” she whispers back. 

Hovering in the murky spot between sleep and wakefulness, listening to the rain patter against the windows, she thinks how miraculous it was that her life could be where it was now. There was a completeness to her being, the sum of all she ever did and felt and was. That something she tried to run away could be a blessing instead, and that fear of the unknown was a sorry excuse to deprive herself of such joy. 

Love could be as simple as sitting next to this man on a bus, his hand loosely laced with hers, and knowing from the bottom of her heart that the risk of falling in love was most certainly worth this reward. 

********


End file.
